The Assumption 2022
In the Apostolic Constitution “Munificentissimus Deus” – which means -The Most Generous God, Pope Pius XII -On 1 November 1950, he proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In this constitution we can read: ” For the glory of Almighty God , in honour of the Blessed Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” The history of the first centuries of Christianity confirms this fact. Just as the faithful have always made pilgrimages to the tombs of saints, no one in the history of the Church mentions a pilgrimage to the eventual tomb of Our Lady or the very place where Mary is buried. For us today in this celebration, something else is important.
We are to look to heaven – where the purpose of our lives is. As St Paul wrote: ” Set your mind on the things that are above.” Today’s feast day speaks and even ‘shouts’: Man stop! Stop in this world torn by discord, quarrels, wars and the relentless pursuit of money and a substitute for happiness. What this world brings is not the most important thing. The most important thing for you should be heaven, to which Mary was taken with her body and soul. Nowadays we, often forget this goal of our lives – heaven. Worldly concerns prevent us from looking beyond the next day, we fear lest our lives turn to ruin. The French philosopher Simone Weil once wrote that a man must stand on the ruins, the ruins of his life, because from the ruins one can see heaven better.
When everything is going well for us, money is enough for everything, heaven and God are unnecessary to us, but when illness or some other problem comes along, then the first thing we do is run to church with a grudge against God.
All the time we are to look to the heaven – where the purpose of our life is. If we do not forget it, there may be no need to stand on the ruins of our lives. In the first reading from today’s Liturgy of the Word, we heard about the Woman adorned with the sun who gave birth to a Son and then escaped into the desert. This Woman is not only Mary, but also an icon of the Church, an icon of each of us. God calls us to ‘give birth to Christ’ with the witness of our lives and to go into the desert of today’s world stripped of all moral and Christian values. So that it is precisely there to be an “oasis” where thirsty man will find Christ, the “Living Water” that gives eternal life. But if we ourselves do not think about heaven, about eternal life, and if we do not strive to attain it, how can we show the way to others?